New Delhi The country’s wasteland declined more than 5 lakh hectare during 2005-2008, a national wasteland atlas released on Wednesday has noted. The atlas prepared by the National Remote Sensing Centre under the Indian Space Research Organisation has stated that wasteland during 2005-08 declined by 3.2 million hectare while increase in wasteland was to the tune of 2.7 million hectare. The most of the decline in wasteland had been due to use of land for industrial purpose, creation of plantation cover and land being used for agricultural purpose, the atlas prepared for the department of land resources under ministry of rural development has noted. The atlast also indicate more than 13,769 hectare of wasteland has been used for industrial purpose with states such as Karnataka (2965 h), Gujarat (2319 h), Rajasthan (1638 h), Tamil Nadu (1537 h) and Andhra Pradesh (1087 h) have been leaders in using wasteland for setting up industries. More than 80,000 hectare of wasteland has been taken up under plantation with Karnataka, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh have been leaders in creating 'green cover'. The atlas also reveals that 1.3 million hectare of wasteland have been used for agricultural activities with states such as Rajasthan (0.5 mh), Gujarat (0.2 mh), Bihar (0.1 mh) and Jharkhand (0.1 mh) are the leading states. “Such detailed district level mapping would help us in focusing on areas where wasteland could be used for economic and ecological benefits,” rural development minister Jairam Ramesh said. The atlas say that the area under the wastelands have declined states such Rajastahn, Mizoram, Manipur, Gujarat, Bihar, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. However during the 2005-8, a slight increase in wastelands areas were recorded in the states such as Jammu & Kashmir, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Uttarkhand. During the last exercise of mapping wastelands using multi-season satellite data of 2005-06, land resources department had finally adopted a classification system with 23 categories of wastelands.